There are so many styles of poetry. Today, I’m going to combine all the types of narrative poetry into one post, so that we aren’t talking about poems for the rest of the year!

Narrative poetry are poems that tell stories. There are many examples of modern narrative poetry (and songs that tell stories too). First, we’re going to talk about modern narrative poetry, then we’ll look at several different examples of traditional narrative poems.

Modern Narrative Poetry

One of the most famous narrative poems for kids is A Visit From St, Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore. Growing up in Alaska, however, there was one other narrative poem that was equally as popular. Many of my elementary school teachers worked The Creation of Sam McGee by Robert Service into school lessons. There is a picture book version of this poem with vivid illustrations that are gripping and a little scary. In third or fourth grade I had to memorize the opening stanza of the poem.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
      By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
      That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
      But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
      I cremated Sam McGee.

Click here to listen to Johnny Cash recite the poem and see the pictures from the picture book.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is an eerie poem that tells the story of a man haunted by the memory of his lost love Lenore. Here are the first two stanzas:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
               Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
               Nameless here for evermore.

Another modern example of narrative poetry happens in the opening jingles to certain television programs. Two famous examples come to mind. The first is the opening song to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air sitcom performed by Will Smith, who also starred in the show. (This, by the way, was one of my favorite shows when I was in high school.)

Another famous opening song comes from The Bevelry Hillbillies, a show I’ve only seen a few times and was popular in the 1960s.

Traditional Narrative Poetry

Traditional narrative poetry is a glimpse into the ancient custom of storytelling. Many narrative poems were recited in small and large group settings. In this type of poem, often, a character, or narrator, is telling the tale. These stories usually have a complete story arc with plot, conflict, and a resolution. There are several types of traditional narrative poetry. Let’s briefly look at the ballad, the epic, the idyll, and the lay.

The Ballad

Folk Ballads come from medieval Europe and have a specific structure. They tell dramatic and detailed stories and were usually sung to entertain or so that people could dance to them. Ballads show, they don’t tell. They’re all about using detailed description and drama to entertain. They have a specific structure. They consist of quatrains (four-line stanzas) though often opposite lines rhyme, creating a work made of couplets (two lines of verse that form a unit). Two common rhyme schemes used in ballads are ABAB or ABCB. Some ballads also have a refrain that is repeated between verses. Consider the rhyme scheme in the first two stanzas of John Barleycorn: A Ballad by Robert Burns, written in 1782.

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and plough’d him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

The Epic

The epic poem is a book-length narrative that tells the heroic story of people who lived long ago. Most often, these heroes meet up with monsters or magical creatures and must defeat them. The most well-known epics come from Ancient Greece and often began with the narrator asking the muses from Greek mythology for the inspiration needed to craft a poem worthy of the gods. Think and Homer’s Iliad about Achilles and his exploits in the Trojan War. Epics often make good use of epithets, which metaphorically describe someone by their characteristics. For example, Hector, in the Iliad, is referred to as Hector “of the glinting helmet” or Hector the “horse-taming” or “man-killing” warrior. Epithets can also be used to describe the setting.

The Idyll

Idyll comes from the Greek eidyllion, meaning “little picture.” These were short pastoral poems, which simply means they described idyllic rural settings and the Greco-Roman people who lived in them, most often shepherds. They were meant to show the beauty of pastoral living compared to living in a city. In the Renaissance, however, the term idyll was used to distinguish narrative pastoral poems from those that used dialogue. Overall, the idyll poem evokes a rustic, pastoral, and tranquil mood. Here are the first two stanzas of Christopher Marlowe’s pastoral poem, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow Rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

The Lay

The lay poem is suspected to be Celtic in origin. These are short poems of romance and chivalry. A famous lay is The Franklin’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, which was part of his Cantebury Tales. I found a translation on a Harvard website, and it was pretty fun to read the Old English along with a modern translation. Here is the first stanza in modern English:

These old noble Bretons in their days
Of diverse adventures made lays,
Rhymed in their first Breton tongue,
Which lays with their instruments they sang
Or else read them for their pleasure;
And one of them have I in remembrance,
Which I shall say with as good will as I can.

Your Turn!

Try your hand at writing at least one stanza of a narrative poem. You decide whether or not you want it to follow a rhyme scheme. Share it in the comments. And let me know if you have any questions.